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After trojan removal, no keyboard or mouse

Friend of mine has an XP Pro PC that was recently infected with four trojans. When he asked for help, the keyboard and mouse no longer work when Windows loads.

I have tried booting from a Win7 USB, an Ultimate Boot CD, and other bootable mediums and the KB and MS work fine in any other OS.

I removed his HDD and placed it in my USB HDD dock, ran MS Security Essentials, which found the four trojans and removed them.

Next I reinstalled his HDD and tried to boot to Windows. It loads all the way to the user login, but the KB and MS still won't work. I tried booting in Safe Mode, Safe Mode with Net, Safe Mode Command Prompt, etc. All have the same outcome, no KB or MS.

So next, I tried to do a repair install via the XP Pro SP3 OEM CD. The disc had no issues with the KB during the first step (DOS looking section) and I was able to begin the repair install without issues. But then when it reboots and enters the second step (Windows looking section), the KB and MS still won't work there either!

UGGHHHH!!!

If I had any hair, I would totally be pulling it out by now. I am hoping to avoid a wipe and reinstall because of the number of programs that we would have to reinstall. As a last measure, I can backup his user profile via my dock and do just that. Problem is some of his discs are at home 300 miles away.

BC AdBot (Login to Remove)

Backups taken when the OS is in good shape makes things so much easier........

My suggestion at this point & it would save time over guessing this & that to no avail, would be to reinstall the OS & restore the user profife as noted above. If you're in the US, it takes only a day or two for install media to arrive from 300 miles, that would give you time to backup data & whatever else needs to be done.

Evidently the infection(s) has corrupted the USB drivers or possibly even chipset, mouse & keyboard are normally plug-n-play items. I have seen these drivers reinstalled in Safe Mode, but with no mouse, one can't get anything done.

If anyone else has an idea, hopefully it'll be posted soon, in the meantime, you should have your friend go ahead & send the install media. Normally the repair install will fix things, at least those that are OS related. This seems to suggest that a reinstall is needed.

Cat

Performing full disc images weekly and keeping important data off of the 'C' drive as generated can be the best defence against Malware/Ransomware attacks, as well as a wide range of other issues.

Cat, thanks for the advice. I have already backed up the entire drive via Ghost. I can pull any data from that backup at any time.

Since time is of the essence (for me anyways), I have decided I have no choice but to wipe and reinstall his OS. Now would be a good time to upgrade to 7 anyways. I have an unused license that came in a three pack that he can have.